linking Sarawak civil society members and the world

Last Friday a Lun Bawang youth Edwin Singa Pelipus was murdered by some gang in Lawas town center-this sparked off a few days of peaceful mass protest by the Lun Bawang community, wo have been fed up with rising crime in Lawas and police’s negligence about it(police are quite active againt protest by Lun Bawang eg against the Sabah Sarawak Gas Pipeline) . Most of the main stream and side stream media seems to avoid the news for whatever reason. Those that cover it try to paint it as a racial and violent prone action. Eg Borneo Post `reported’ Malay community rally crowd to `confront’ the Lun Bawang-without a shred of evidence. Unfortunately some `neutral’ alternative media picked this up in the well practiced cut and paste `journalism’. Readers who don’t check out local reports/blogs tend to be taken in-with some even thought it would be a good idea to cover up some `ugly incidence’. The cold-blooded murder and the breach of security seems to meet a conspiracy to side-track them! Security will be a top election issue-no matter how media cover up this issue. TV Sarawak had documented a complaint of a local Lun Bawang from Long Sukang that Lawas police was negligent and even complicit in mis-handling minor foot-ball fights by students. The mistreatment of the student involved was brought to court with assistance by the local Assemblyman Baru Bian and their complaint was upheld by the court recently. The police that allow drugs and gangs to run free in Lawas is now on hot-seat to deliver justice. Don’t let the issue be side-tracked-or worse-covered up!

This is an update from Paul Bian:
Update from Lawas. (26th September 2012)

Caught distributing money for vote buying at last Sarawak state election!

Yellow Cards Campaign

Aim

To mobilise citizens into monitoring the coming 13th General Elections in Malaysia as a collective means to keep a close watch on electoral frauds, and to help clean up the messy elections in the country over time!

Subtitle: let all election violators tremble at their `boss’ this time!

The EC is at it again-warning the public not to query its voters registration where the IC of the voters bear the code no `71′ meant to denote foreign born persons. This has been notorious due to common suspicion that the foreign born persons were given fast-track citizenship and voting rights to boost the chances of the ruling party. Such political intervention, if proven, would have defrauded the elections from the time such practices had been suspected to have cause otherwise inexplicable explosion/doubling of Sabah’s population since 1990. The EC should open their books-together with the JPN, to show that there are no hanky panky in approving these new citizens and voters rather than trying in vain to ask people to look the other way! The citizens are not like civil servants who are bound to take orders from their superiors-causing them to be taken advantage of by politicians who pressure them to support these crooks politically eg attend the gatherings for these politicians where otherwise there would not be any attendants. The EC and JPN should open their books on citizens with `71′ on their ID rather than do more `look the other way’ shouting!

EC: Don’t dispute voters registration using code ’71′

The Malaysian Election Commission often tried to put up pretenses that few will give much credibility: again the EC whose 7 top commissioners are selected by the PM, claim itself as `untouchable’! (see report below). Yet not too long ago the EC was told by the Attorney General and the Police chief asked him to not use the indelible ink bought at millions of dollars for the last general election-and he complied without putting up any defense of its `untouchable’ decision to buy the indelible ink! Then the EC did not carry out the redistricting of the constituencies though the time for doing that has come -not because they are incapable but because they would not be able to do a BN-friendly exercise as they had done it all the time in the last half a century, since BN lack 2/3 majority to pass such a re-districting! They could have seized the chance to do a non-partisan re-districting if they are truly professional! Then the same `untouchable’ EC has time and again failed to penalise BN politicians for vote-buying, abusing the government resources-including Returning Officers who are recruited from among the DOs or municipal chiefs, but take part in N’s campaigns! They give an impression of someone tied in all angles by those power-that-be rather than the truly independent statutory body that they are supposed to be!

The untouchable

by Peter Sibon, reporters@theborneopost.com. Posted on August 2, 2012, Thursday

Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof

EC chief says commission not even answerable to PM, DPM and Parliament

KUCHING: Sick and tired of being labelled a BN government tool by the opposition, Election Commission (EC) chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof broke his silence yesterday and came out charging at his critics.

He blasted back by saying the EC was not even answerable to the prime minister or his deputy.

“As chairman of the EC, nobody controls me. Even the prime minister never asked me to do this or that.

“Likewise, the deputy prime minister also never asked me to do this or do that,” Abdul Aziz told reporters after the EC gave a briefing to officials of political parties and members of the media at Kuching Hilton yesterday.

Abdul Aziz added that not even Parliament could tell the EC what to do. Parliament could only make proposals to the body, he said.

“But the final decision is still made by the EC.

“We are as free as it could possibility be.”

On the recent exercise when a Commission was set by Parliament for the EC to be reformed, he said it accepted seven and rejected three proposals.

On the 300,000 people in the state who have yet to register as voters, Abdul Aziz said this showed there was freedom of expression in the country.

“We have tried our level best to get everyone to be registered, including seeking the assistance of political parties to get those eligible to be registered, but we really cannot force people to register.

“It’s their choice.”

He added that even developed states like Selangor and Johor experienced this problem.

“But in Sarawak, the other factor could be logistics due to the vastness of the state.”

On the coming general election, he said that 1,05,190 Sarawakians would be eligible to vote.

Meanwhile, during a question-and-answer session, state EC director Datu Takun Sunggah had a heated argument with PKR’s probable candidate for Miri, Dr Michael Teo Yu Keng, who alleged that ballot boxes could be tempered with by the EC.

Takun advised Dr Teo to get his facts right or to come up with proofs of any wrong doings.

“You can stay in a police lock up to guard the ballot boxes yourself to see if they are tempered with,” said Takun, to which Dr Teo shot back by saying that he was merely seeking clarification on whether the EC was indeed an independent and trustworthy body.

Takun responded by saying that he (Dr Teo) could always bring his case to court for it to decide.

There is a village which still cling onto their NCR land when Bakun dam was impounded-they built flaoting houses on top of their NCR footprint! Even though they are now locating land to relocate they find their folks who are resettled in Sg Asap-the government resettlement area, are flowing back to their NCR `land’! The resistance to Bakun’s impoundment continue, lest the public may forget:

Uma Jawe residents ready to swap ‘jelatongs’ for longhouse

Posted on July 30, 2012, Monday

FLOATING CHURCH: The floating SIB church at Uma Jawe in a dilapidated state.

BAKUN: The 30 odd families of Uma Jawe, who are currently living in jelatongs (floating houses), have identified a site to build a new longhouse, revealed its village chief Janting Ibau.

He claimed they had obtained permission from the relevant authorities to do so.

“We would like to settle down for good as jelatongs are a temporary measure after our longhouses were submerged when the Bakun hydroelectric power (HEP) dam was impounded on October 13, 2010,” Janting told The Borneo Post at Uma Jawe, about four hours’ boat ride from here, on Friday.

He revealed that although most of the people from his village were relocated to Sg Asap Resettlement Scheme, some villagers preferred to stay behind.

“As they cannot be forced to leave their ancestral homes, they instead built jelatongs and stayed put.”

However, he said after almost two years of staying afloat, they wanted to have permanent houses so that they don’t have to constantly spend time and money to repair their jelatongs.

“Now many people from Sg Asap want to come back as this land is recognised as our NCR land.”

Janting also revealed that living on jelatongs was not something they were proud of as there were a lot of issues tied to it, such as sanitation, school, healthcare and pollution to the environment.

“I must admit that living in a jelatong is not a healthy lifestyle. But what can we do? We now hope that the relevant authorities will assist us in rebuilding our longhouse so that we can settle here permanently.”

Janting revealed that another key reason for his people to come back and to rebuild their longhouses was because of culture shock at Sg Asap.

“Living in Sg Asap is very expensive because we have to buy almost everything. Over here, we can fish and hunt and gather jungle produce easily. Life is definitely cheaper here compared to at Sg Asap, except that it’s too far away from amenities such as school and clinic.”

Janting disclosed that while his two sons were staying in his longhouse in Sg Asap, he and his wife were tilling the land behind their jelatong.

“We will plant paddy this year and we will open up more land to plant fruit trees and rubber trees as well. In the long run, we would be better off again.”

Meanwhile, Wilson Ugak promised the people there that their church, which was floated with oil drums and floating trees after the impoundment of the dam, would be rebuild.

Most of the people of Uma Jawe are Christians of the Borneo Evangelical Church (SIB) denomination.

While there are many questions on how the Election Commission of Malaysia will spend the unprecedented and world record RM700mil budget for the 13th General Election these are the possibilities based on spending trends of the EC. Have a look:

1. International and appointed election observers-this general election will make history for EC’s introduction of international observers and appointed local observers after years of adamant refusal. Much money will be used to take good care of the international guests-who are handpicked from select `friendly’ countries -may be Burma, Zimbabwe, Kazakhstan and the like, to sweeten these international `examiners’ of the Malaysian election administration. Then they had also appointed select local groups to be the local observers who are not told that they will be restricted by 20 conditions that had been introduced to the few election observers in the country. Loads of 5-star hotel `briefings’ and expensive cuisine will perhaps help to wash down these harsh conditions onto these new observers; 10 local observers will be appointed per parliament constituencies-thus there will be 222X10 =2220 local observers; More EC staff will be needed to handle this hordes of appointed observers, not to mention that the existing un-appointed observers will actually the ones putting more pressures on the EC!

2. Then there are a flurry of effort to `correct’ the constituencies boundaries, given that the EC can’t redraw the constituencies boundary due to BN’s lack of 2/3 majority in the Parliament and state assemblies. Switching the voters have the same effect as switching the boundaries-both help to manipulate the constituencies in favour of certain parties. More personnel is needed to do this in time for 13th GE;

The PM was reported to ask Selangor voters to vote a government that can solve the Selangor water dispute ie a BN friendly government. Now the possibility of water rationing voiced by Syabas, the water utility company, that has happened has not been proven to be caused by a real water shortage-but could be politically motivated to pressure the Selangor state government. The PM’s statement then sounds like a political blackmail! This is illegitimate since the water utility was not given a mandate to hold to ransom the state government and through it the people who voted the state government in. A legitimate campaign is one where the challenging party offer something better-not by abusing the power entrusted by the public to inconvenience the public, and even use it to press for another party to be voted in! The Pm did not show that his party can solve the water problem-it is blatantly flaunting its willingness to abuse government power to engage in illegitimate politicking! If this precedent is accepted the country will be in for more politically motivated false crisis if the governments go for tit-for-tat’s! If the EC is professional it will definitely not endorse or condone such illegitimate politicking! It takes such occasion to expose where the EC stands and if it has any professionalism at all!